Patch 3.3.3 PTR Patch Notes Posted!

Blizzard has not yet released any information regarding the release date of the next patch, but with confirmation that we'll be seeing a Patch 3.3.5 (featuring the Ruby Sanctum raid), and maybe'll they'll fit another patch in between the two so hopefully it won't be too long before we see some of these awesome changes go live.

General

Copied Test Realm characters are not copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

PvP

The amount of Honor awarded for an Honorable Kill has been increased by 100% for characters of all levels. Given that all avenues in the game which award players with Honor do so with a calculated conversion from a specific amount of Honorable Kills, this change means that all Honor players can obtain through various means will be increased by 100%. To offset against this in two key areas, experience gains in Battlegrounds have been reduced by 50% and Honor awarded for completing each Wintergrasp weekly quest has been reduced by 50%. When pairing the Honor rewarded from Honorable Kills being increased by 100% with the 50% Honor reduction from Wintergrasp weekly quests, and 50% experience-gain reduction from completing objectives in Battlegrounds, players will notice no change in the net amount of Honor or experience awarded in either case.

Battlegrounds

The Random Battleground system has been added! Similar to the Random Dungeon system in the Dungeon Finder, players can now queue for a random Battleground.

The Random Battleground option can be found in the Battleground tab of the PvP frame and is only available for level 80 characters at this time.

If this option is selected, players may not queue for specific Battlegrounds and a random Battleground simultaneously.

Similar to the Random Dungeon system, players will not know for which Battleground they are chosen when selected from the queue until they zone into the Battleground.

The Random Battleground option will only allow a group size of 5 players to queue together.

Bonus rewards will be offered for choosing the Random Battleground option.

Winning a Battleground using the Random Battleground option for the first time in a day will award players with 30 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency and 25 Arena points.

Winning additional Battlegrounds using the Random Battleground option after the first random win will award players with 15 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.

Losing a Battleground using the Random Battleground option will award players with 5 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.

Daily Battleground quests have been removed in place of the Random Battleground option. Battlegrounds will no longer award Marks of Honor.

Players with existing Marks of Honor can still turn them in to their respective faction's quest givers, including individual marks for those who may have more marks for one Battleground than another.

Items which previously required Marks of Honor will have their costs adjusted to remove these requirements.

Whenever a Battleground has the holiday bonus active, it will now be referred to as "Call to Arms" in the Battleground tab and Calendar. In addition, Call to Arms Battleground Honor rewards have been changed.

Choosing a specific Battleground with the Call to Arms bonus active will yield the exact same rewards as when choosing the Random Battleground option.

Winning a Call to Arms Battleground for the first time in a day will award players with 30 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency and 25 Arena points.

Additional Call to Arms Battleground victories after the first win for a player that day will award them with 15 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.

When using the Random Battleground option, players will not receive additional rewards if the Battleground chosen under the Call to Arms bonuses. In addition, the rewards for the first victory of the day cannot be earned more than once, regardless of whether or not it is obtained from the Random Battleground system or the Call to Arms Battleground.

Wintergrasp

The internal balance system now only changes when a faction achieves 2 consecutive defenses after an initial capture of Wintergrasp, up from 1. More details can be found on our PvP forum.

Dungeons & Raids

Players may now skip the initial introduction dialog to this dungeon once they have completed it at least once.

Classes: General

Several raid buffs have had their ranges increased to 100 yards, up from 45 yards, to prevent select buffs from repeatedly getting applied and removed during highly mobile encounters. Some buffs, such as paladin auras, totems, shouts and are intentionally meant to have shorter ranges and remain unchanged.

Death Knights

: This ability now causes a very high amount of threat while the death knight is in Blood Presence.

: Now deals 70% weapon damage, plus 12% of physical damage done as shadow damage for each of the death knight's diseases on the target. The net result should be larger strikes with no diseases present, while maximum damage with all diseases applied to the target should stay the same.

Hunters

Talents

Beast Mastery

: This ability is now an aura and provides 1/2/3% damage to all party or raid members within 100 yards.

Mages

: Spell power scaling on this spell has been increased by approximately 5%.

Talents

Arcane

: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc off of critical strikes. The self damage buff remains unchanged.

: This talent now only grants additional spell power when damage is absorbed by , , , or . The limit of 5% of the mage's health on the spell power buff has been removed.

Fire

: Threat reduction is now 10/20%, up from 5/10%.

Frost

Brain Freeze: This talent now allows your next or to be instant and cost no mana. There is a small internal cooldown to keep the Frostfire Bolt from immediately triggering Brain Freeze again.

Priests

Talents

Discipline

: now has a 60-second duration, up from 20 seconds, but a 20-second cooldown.

Rogues

: The damage-over-time component of this ability can now produce critical strikes.

Quests

Many quests which require vehicles have had their vehicle mechanics updated and improved in the interest of fun.

User Interface

All Alert pop-ups now have new and fresh Alert icons.

Auction House

If the Auction House on a realm is unavailable for any reason, an alert will pop up informing players who attempt to access it.

Players can now Right-Click to place an item in the Auction frame.

Entire stacks of a specific item type can be placed in the Auction frame and several options have been added for choosing how to list auctions.

Stack Size: If a stack of items has been added to the Auction frame, players can select the size of the stack they wish to sell. If an invalid stack size is entered (i.e. a stack of 21 Saronite Ore), the Create Auction button will be grayed out.

Number of Stacks: In addition to selecting the size of a stack, players can select how many stacks of an item they wish to sell (i.e. if a player has a total of 43 Saronite Ore in the Auction frame, they can choose to list 2 stacks of 20, 4 stacks of 10, 8 stacks of 5, 43 stacks of 1, etc. If the number and amount of stacks listed results in a remainder, the left-over items will be placed back in the player's bags automatically).

Stack Size and Number of Stacks are linked mathematically so that altering the variables of one may automatically calculate the amount of the other (i.e. if a player puts 20 in the Stack Size field and 43 Saronite Ore are in the Auction frame, the Number of Stacks field will change to 2 by default. If a player only wishes to sell one stack of 20 Saronite Ore, the Number of Stacks field can be manually changed to 1).

Price: Players can now choose to input the price of an item Per Stack or Per Item by selecting either option from a pull-down. If Per Item is selected and a player is selling a stack of that item, the Auction House will multiply the selected Per Item price by the amount of that item in the stack. If Per Stack is selected, the player can enter the total price he or she wishes to charge for each stack of that item being listed.

Auction Post Completion Bar: If multiple items or stacks of items are being listed at once by a player, a Posting completion bar will appear showing the total progress of each individual auction being listed once the Create Auction button is selected. The greater the number of individual listings being made in a single press of the Create Auction button, the longer this process will take. Players can still browse the Auction House while the Posting completion bar is in progress, but moving around will interrupt the progress, similar to moving while attempting to create multiple bandages with First Aid. Just as with creating bandages, auctions that were completed prior to the character moving or otherwise canceling the actions will successfully be listed.

Dungeon Finder

The Deserter debuff given to players who leave a dungeon prematurely when queuing via the Random Dungeon option has been increased to 30 minutes, up from 15 minutes. The cooldown for using the Random Dungeon option remains 15 minutes.

The Random Dungeon cooldown is no longer displayed as a debuff. Instead, players will see the cooldown time remaining displayed in the Dungeon Finder window when Random Dungeon or Random Heroic Dungeon is selected from the pull-down.

If a player in your party has the Deserter debuff, or is on cooldown from the Random Dungeon option, his or her character name will be displayed in the Dungeon Finder window listed as "On Cooldown," preventing the group from queuing.

Anyone in a dungeon party can now re-queue their group for a dungeon, as players will still be prompted whether or not to accept their chosen role.

Players who use the Vote Kick option will now be prompted to provide a reason for kicking a party member. This reason will be presented to everyone in the party except for the person voted to be kicked.

When joining as a group, more generous level requirements will be used instead of Random Dungeon level requirements so that players of different levels joining together will be eligible for a greater number of dungeons.

World Event bosses (such as Ahune for the Fire Festival) will now be accessible through the Dungeon Finder. Players must use the Dungeon Finder to access these bosses.

Parties randomly created via the Dungeon Finder will always be arranged in the party interface from top to bottom in the following order: tank, healer, damage, damage, damage.

If a random party is created via the Dungeon Finder and a player cannot roll Need on an item, a reason will now be provided.

Authenticator Frame: If a player has a Battle.net Authenticator attached to his or her account and selects Remember Account Name at the login screen, the next time that player logs into World of Warcraft, a field to input the Authenticator code will be displayed below the password field. The World Map will now provide an option to display different levels of a multi-layered dungeon, zone, or city (i.e. players can view the map of the Dalaran Sewers without having to be in that location). Quest Tracking Feature

The Quest Tracking Objectives Frame can now be widened via the Interface Options menu.

The short description for a tracked quest is now displayed on the Map in the quest pane.

Quest items in a player's inventory which begin quests now each have an exclamation point overlaid on their icons to make them more easily identifiable.

If a players selects Track Low Level Quests, the quest objectives will no longer appear dim on the Map, nor will the exclamation points appear dim over NPC heads or on the Mini-Map.

Objectives Frame

The Objectives Frame will now list the number of quests displayed at the top. In addition, players can now click on the word "Objectives" at the top of the Objectives Frame for a list of sorting and filtering options which will determine how quests are ordered. Any quests or achievements filtered or sorted out of the Objectives Frame are still being tracked and are simply hidden in this frame.

Sorting

Sort by most difficult quests.

Sort by least difficult quests.

Sort by quests closest in proximity to the player (this will automatically update as players travel around).

Manual sorting: This allows players to Right-Click on each quest name in the Objectives Frame and determine in what order they should be placed.

Filtering

Toggle achievement tracking.

Toggle completed quest tracking.

Toggle tracking quest objectives in other zones.

Players can now Shift + Click on a quest objective or check the Track Quest box on the Map to track a quest in the Objectives Frame.

When speaking to an NPC for which a player has 2 or more quests and not all of them are complete, the incomplete quests will now correctly show as a gray question marks in the dialog box. In addition, repeatable quests will be properly colored as blue exclamation points or question marks in the dialog box for NPCs with multiple quests available, or for which the player has multiple quests in progress or completed.

Comments

Comment by Thelion

Very nice changes to the classess, especially with all the passive auras they're giving now.

Comment by Dusklight

on 2010-02-19T19:27:21-06:00

No druid changes?

I feel unloved. =(

Comment by Adamsm

on 2010-02-19T19:42:55-06:00

Finally, no more CoS opening.

Comment by fenoglio

on 2010-02-19T19:47:12-06:00

The Culling of StratholmePlayers may now skip the initial introduction dialog to this dungeon once they have completed it at least once.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS YES YES YES YES YES THANK YOU OMG THANK YOU

and lol @ pic

Comment by Rideswild

on 2010-02-19T19:49:16-06:00

Does this mean the Public test realm is open now?

Comment by Octavix

on 2010-02-19T19:53:47-06:00

A Few things to note:

1) No. There does not have to be a patch between 3.3.3 and 3.3.5. There wasn't a 3.3.1 or a 3.2.1; they just went from .0 to .2. Therefore, I would assume that Patch Builds do not have to necessarily be the next exact number build in line.

Comment by Miyari

on 2010-02-19T20:29:25-06:00

A Few things to note:

1) No. There does not have to be a patch between 3.3.3 and 3.3.5. There wasn't a 3.3.1 or a 3.2.1; they just went from .0 to .2. Therefore, I would assume that Patch Builds do not have to necessarily be the next exact number build in line.

We keep these notes completely up-to-date with Blizzard's official patch notes, not clarifications that have been made through other forum posts. Most of these additions / modifications are added to the official patch notes shortly after being made, or sometimes they change their minds yet again and they don't take out something they say they will, or put in something completely different. As such, these patch notes, while not addressing the issues you brought up, are the up to date release of Blizzard's patch notes, which is what we have always and still intend on displaying.

For posterity's sake, I'll remove the bit about Chains of Ice (though it would be nice if Blizzard kept their own notes up to date rather than simply Blueposting in random threads throughout their forums) and I'll add the votekick thing to the post, but not to the patch notes. I expect the votekick change will be added soon, but I am not interested in adding it to our notes until it is "official" (yes I know blue poster technically equals official, but when the intention is to display the "official patch notes" that's what we're going to do, outdated or not :/). Obviously if major major major changes are upcoming that have not yet been edited into the notes, I'll surely give them some mention in the meantime.

Comment by Octavix

on 2010-02-19T20:30:43-06:00

A Few things to note:

1) No. There does not have to be a patch between 3.3.3 and 3.3.5. There wasn't a 3.3.1 or a 3.2.1; they just went from .0 to .2. Therefore, I would assume that Patch Builds do not have to necessarily be the next exact number build in line.

We keep these notes completely up-to-date with Blizzard's official patch notes, not clarifications that have been made through other forum posts. Most of these additions / modifications are added to the official patch notes shortly after being made, or sometimes they change their minds yet again and they don't take out something they say they will, or put in something completely different. As such, these patch notes, while not addressing the issues you brought up, are the up to date release of Blizzard's patch notes, which is what we have always and still intend on displaying.

For posterity's sake, I'll remove the bit about Chains of Ice (though it would be nice if Blizzard kept their own notes up to date rather than simply Blueposting in random threads throughout their forums) and I'll add the votekick thing to the post, but not to the patch notes. I expect the votekick change will be added soon, but I am not interested in adding it to our notes until it is "official" (yes I know blue poster technically equals official, but when the intention is to display the "official patch notes" that's what we're going to do, outdated or not :/). Obviously if major major major changes are upcoming that have not yet been edited into the notes, I'll surely give them some mention in the meantime.

Fair enough

Comment by Miyari

on 2010-02-19T20:31:14-06:00

Also, thanks for the heads-up. I was too busy being terrible at Starcraft 2. ;)

Comment by Octavix

on 2010-02-19T20:32:33-06:00

Also, thanks for the heads-up. I was too busy being terrible at Starcraft 2. ;)

I dun like StarCraft :(

And always happy to help^^

I'm a Blue Hunter.

No seriously. When I'm bored, and not playing WoW, I stalk the forums and news sites, searching for Blue Posts

Comment by Cryptopsy

on 2010-02-19T20:41:55-06:00

Rupture: The damage-over-time component of this ability can now produce critical strikes.

So what will happen to the rogue T8 set bonus?

Filthy Tricks: Now Reduces the cooldown by 5/10 seconds and energy cost by 5/10 of Tricks of the Trade, Distract and Shadowstep abilities, and reduces the cooldown of Preparation by 1.5/3 minutes.Ghostly Strike: If the rogue has a dagger equipped, this ability now deals 180% weapon damage instead of 125%.Hemorrhage: If the rogue has a dagger equipped, this ability now deals 160% weapon damage instead of 110%.Slaughter from the Shadows: Now adds 1/2/3/4/5% damage to all attacks in addition to its current effects.Waylay: The debuff from this talent can now be caused by Backstab in addition to Ambush.

Comment by jjordanplay

Comment by motobreath

on 2010-02-19T21:18:29-06:00

Isnt adding crit to flame shock for elem shammy tier nine set?

Comment by Vaeku

on 2010-02-19T21:19:00-06:00

Authenticator Frame: If a player has a Battle.net Authenticator attached to his or her account and selects Remember Account Name at the login screen, the next time that player logs into World of Warcraft, a field to input the Authenticator code will be displayed below the password field.

I'm glad this is changing. The pop-up is annoying, plus it ruins my chances of beating the frostwyrm to the roar.

Also, seems Blizzard is continuing their tradition of taking elements from add-ons and putting them into their default interface, thus making the add-on obsolete.

Hmm... Anyone notice that there's no fix listed for Maraudon? I don't think they hotfixed it, and I know this list isn't final, but they better get it done. I do not want to go through Mara Orange before Mara Purple again, especially as a healer. It was hard enough as DPS.

Comment by Miyari

on 2010-02-19T21:44:06-06:00

Hmm... Anyone notice that there's no fix listed for Maraudon? I don't think they hotfixed it, and I know this list isn't final, but they better get it done. I do not want to go through Mara Orange before Mara Purple again, especially as a healer. It was hard enough as DPS.

This was fixed in Patch 3.3.2.

Comment by Hunger

on 2010-02-19T21:57:02-06:00

Looks like Sub is viable for rogues again.

Oh, and the passive auras look nice. Hunters already had Trueshot Aura, which was more convenient than the shaman or DK version.

Comment by Frames

on 2010-02-19T23:46:01-06:00

30 minute deserter debuff... Really?...

Comment by mfrboga

on 2010-02-20T00:45:43-06:00

It's very sad that they never even buffed holy priests after the last few patches. They're becoming a very useless healing class ever since they've been buffing the rest of the healing classes to become just like us, it's unfair.